


here's what happens after the dust settles

by allthatsleftbehind



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene, One Shot, Post-Episode: s06e03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthatsleftbehind/pseuds/allthatsleftbehind
Summary: This is a 6x03 missing scene one shot about a conversation that needed to happen but didn't because the writers are idiots. Emma turns up at Regina's house, because staying away is harder than being honest.





	

It’s late, Emma knows, but there’s still a light on in Regina’s bedroom so Emma idles the Bug for a few minutes before shutting off the engine. She pulls the keys from the ignition hastily and gets out of the car before she changes her mind and drives right on home, to Hook, to… whatever it is her life in that oversized (and ill-begotten, she doesn’t fail to remember) house with him is meant to be. She still hasn’t figured that out quite yet. **  
**

Before she knows it, she’s up the path and at the door, hand curled in a fist to knock, but she never gets a chance — as if by magic (ha! well, yes, probably magic), Regina is pulling open the door before she can, silk robe the color of a starless night wrapped around her small frame. Emma exhales, tries to twist at least one corner of her mouth into a crooked smile.

“Emma, are you okay? What’s wrong?” The concern in Regina’s voice, on her face, is palpable. It’s been a long time since her son’s other mother showed up on her porch after midnight, but the sight isn’t unwelcome. On the contrary, it feels like the first time she’s seen the blonde in weeks, and it’s strange to feel such sweet relief to find her standing there, whole and accounted for… at least physically speaking. Regina fights the urge to grab hold of her.

“I’m fine, I just… can I?”

Without another word, Regina pulls the door open wider and Emma steps in so she can close it behind her and then they’re there, silent in the dark foyer and Emma is wringing her hands and Regina is watching her, waiting for whatever’s coming next. She finds she’s scared of what exactly it will be.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s late. I just saw your light on and I thought I’d come by, you know, check in on you and Henry.”

“Henry and I are just fine, Emma… but I would imagine there are better hours to perform your impromptu safety checks.”

She’s teasing, of course. Regina feels claustrophobic with all the tension in the air and will resort to humor to diffuse even a bit of it. Where once Emma showing up unannounced was almost to be expected, these days it’s a rarity. The Savior’s sudden arrival throws her slightly off-kilter.

“I know, I know. I can just…” Emma makes as if she’s going to turn and walk out the door, but it’s a half-hearted effort and Regina knows she wants to stay, maybe needs to.

Regina’s eyebrow quirks ever so slightly, but still she says nothing. Instead, she touches the arm of the blonde’s red leather jacket silently and sees Emma exhale in what could almost be mistaken for resignation. Emma came here for a reason and whatever it is, she needs to say it in her own time.

And so Regina begins walking towards her study and Emma wordlessly follows, sitting down on one of the couches with an almost comical formality. Regina fights to urge to laugh at the sight of a prim and proper Emma Swan, but the reality of the situation — whatever this situation might be — keeps her expression neutral.

“Emma, it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. You’re always welcome here. You know that.”

Regina hands her a glass of something thick and coppery before sitting down next to her.

“I asked Hook to move in,” Emma blurts out. It’s not what she meant to say and she’s not sure why it’s the first thing she does, but it’s out there and that’s that. She notices Regina’s throat bob with a heavy swallow, her head tilt slightly as if trying to regain her equilibrium.

“Oh. That’s… I’m happy for you. Is he… was this something you’d discussed previously?” Regina is struggling for equilibrium and isn’t quite sure why. Sure, there’s her general distaste for the pirate, who isn’t good enough for this earth in her opinion, let alone for Emma. But then, people in glass houses…

“Not really,” Emma answers plainly, taking another swig from her glass. This conversation is going nowhere fast.

“Emma –”

“I don’t know, it just seemed like something we should do. That’s what couples do, right? They move in together. Hook wanted to. I guess I wanted to too, so I asked him and he said yes and, you know, the rest is history.”

Regina can’t tell what she’s supposed to be feeling because she doesn’t know what Emma’s feeling. The details are there, but the emotion behind them is muddled. There was a time she could read Emma better than the back of her own hand, but time apart — why were they spending so much time apart these days? — is making her rusty around the edges.

“Good. It sounds like things are going well, then,” Regina settles for, getting up to refill her glass and returning with the carafe to offer Emma the same. If this is what Emma wants, she’ll support her because that’s what they do. She hopes she sounds enthusiastic or at least convincing.

Emma looks up at the brunette standing above her, her green eyes full of something Regina is reaching to place but can’t quite, so she returns the carafe to its stand and returns to the couch beside her. That look could undo her; she’s no match for Emma’s rare moments of unabashed need, but this isn’t something she can fix. Does it even need fixing? Regina understands less than she ever did.

“I have the feeling you haven’t graced me with a visit to tell me about your new concubine,” Regina says somewhat stiffly instead.

She’s aware she’s being slightly cold, but then, what is she supposed to feel? She’s barely seen Emma in weeks and has no idea why. Sure, there are quick catch-ups in Granny’s about their next move, but even those conversations seem stunted and full of too many unspoken words. Regina isn’t used to being shut out, at least not by Emma, not after how far they’d come, but she knows she had no right to that feeling — the hurt, she sadness, the frustration aren’t hers to own. Emma has her own life, she has Hook, and if she no longer has time for Regina, well then, that’s just the way it’s going to be.

Emma looks up at her then, scoffs slightly but doesn’t bite back. Instead, she studies Regina a long moment before breaking her gaze and staring down at the crystal glass between her fingers, contemplating her next move.

“Emma, talk to me, please,” Regina says then, and Emma can hear an unspoken plea in her voice that nearly breaks her heart right in half for reasons she can’t name. She knows she’s been isolating herself, but there’s a lot to figure out and it’s not fair to put all of her uncertainty onto anyone else, especially not Regina. And yet Regina is the only person she can imagine unloading such a heavy weight onto. She trusts the older woman to share the burden.

“I just… I don’t know. Things have been a bit crazy, what with the Land of Untold Stories spilling over into Storybrooke and your other half wreaking havoc.”

Emma realizes what she’s said before she’s actually said it but can’t stop herself. Beside her, Regina stiffens at the mention of the Evil Queen but says nothing, instead licking her lips before letting out a somewhat strangled sound she’d intended to sound like a laugh.

“Have you had the chance of meeting the acquaintance of… my other half?” Regina asks pointedly. Emma just shrugs in response.

“And?”

“She’s… well, terrifying.”

“Yes, she does seem to have a penchant for scaring the masses,” Regina says through gritted teeth. It’s the strangest feeling, being so wholly someone else when that someone else used to be yourself. She can’t quite come to terms with it as easily as she thought she might when she made the decision to rip the Evil Queen out of her and crush her heart. A lot of good that did, anyway.

“She’s not you, Regina, not really, but without you, she’s… unpredictable. Uncontrollable. Unhinged. She doesn’t have your goodness to balance her and that makes her… well, it makes her dangerous. Oh, and she wants to destroy me. There’s that,” Emma adds, lifting her eyebrows in amusement, or at least an attempt at nonchalance.

Regina is appalled. She doesn’t know how the Evil Queen survived and frankly, she’s scared to find out. But she remembers the worst parts of herself and what they were capable of in moments of desperation and it makes her sick to think of it. That’s her, no matter what Emma says — it has been her for so many years and yet again, she’s incapable of stopping the constantly raging storm. But coming after Emma… that’s another thing entirely.

She reaches her hand out and lays it on Emma’s forearm, and Emma’s eyes snap up to meet hers again.

“I will never let her destroy you,” Regina says with such conviction, Emma has to fight the urge to look away. “I’ll die first.”

It’s Emma’s turn to swallow now. She nods quickly and thinks of getting up to leave. She knows that. Of course she knows.

She doesn’t leave.

“Regina, there’s something else,” Emma starts. Keeping things from Snow and Charming is one thing, but keeping them from Regina feels as though it’s bordering on sacrilegious and frankly, she needs to get out of her head. Maybe if she tells someone, tells Regina, she’ll somehow become less haunted.

Regina’s hand is still on her forearm, but she slides it down to cover Emma’s own, wrapping around her fingers and giving them a quick squeeze of encouragement. It should be awkward but it’s not and Emma doesn’t want to think about that so she doesn’t. She forges on.

“I’ve been having these… visions. My magic, it’s…” she can’t find the words.

“Your hands,” Regina helps. “Do the visions have anything to do with what’s been happening to them?”

“Yes. I mean, I think so. I mean, these visions, there was some… some Oracle or something who showed me. Things were happening, I was… seeing things and she showed me, she said it was my future, that… that all Saviors are defeated by a villain, that that’s how my story ends…”

Now that she’s letting the words out, they’re flowing faster than she can keep up with and she feels like her lungs are collapsing, her eyes blurred with tears. Everything would be taken from her, absolutely everything and she can’t bear the thought of losing the life she’s worked so hard to build, even if it wasn’t the one she’d originally imagined. This is it and this is everything and without it… fuck.

Regina tries to still her, rubbing small circles in the space between Emma’s thumb and forefinger in slow repetition and holding fast, keeping her tethered to this world.

“Breathe,” the brunette tells her, and she does.

“What was in the vision, Emma?”

“Honestly?” Emma is overcome with guilt. She thinks back to what she told Archie a few days ago, that maybe Regina — or the Evil Queen, whatever — could be her undoing. Looking at this Regina here and now, her brown eyes impossibly soft yet fierce with protection, the skin of her palms warm against the back of Emma’s own hand, she knows she’d been silly, that she’d been lying to herself all along.

“Honestly,” Regina replies, and she waits.

“I’m walking with everyone… Hook, my parents, Henry… and I’m fighting someone off, some hooded figure whose face I can’t see, and I’m trying to be strong, to protect everyone but whoever this is just… puts a sword right through me and that’s it, that’s how it all comes crashing down.”

“And you can’t see who you’re fighting? You never get a look at them?”

Emma shakes her head bleakly, the exhaustion of having carried this secret whooshing forward.

Regina is thoughtful, brow furrowed, but it doesn’t take her long to put together the pieces. “You said you were with Hook, Henry and your parents. But where was I? I would be there with you, Emma. I would never leave you to — wait, do you think I —”

“No. God, no, Regina. I know you’d never hurt me.” And she does.

“But she would. And I wasn’t there. Where was I in this so-called vision, Emma? I should have been there!”

Regina is becoming frantic. She pulls her hand from Emma’s and stands, pacing the room in horror at the implications. Strangely, this only reinforces Emma’s certainty that whatever her ending, it doesn’t come by Regina’s hand. How could she ever have been so stupid?

It’s Emma’s turn to be encouraging. She goes to Regina then, puts her hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me. It wasn’t you.”

“But what if it was?”

And now it’s Regina looking at her with watery eyes, lower lip quivering almost imperceptibly. She is uncertain, full of grief at the very idea and yet she knows the Evil Queen and she knows she wasn’t absent from Emma’s vision for no reason. She is always at the Savior’s side. Why not then?

Emma touches a strand of Regina’s hair without thinking, twirling it quickly around her finger before returning her hand to Regina’s shoulder. “It wasn’t.”

Regina sighs, her posture sinking in on itself. In that moment she looks smaller to Emma than she’s ever been, defeated, lost. Kind of like Emma herself has been feeling lately. She shouldn’t have kept herself away for so long. If there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve to be shut out, it’s Regina.  

“We’ll figure this out, Regina. Together. Like we always do.” She’s somewhat surprised to find she truly means it, that suddenly she feels a surge of power, hope, something opposite of the impending sense of doom that’s been hanging over her for, well, too long now if she’s being honest.

“Like we always do,” Regina echoes, and Emma feels that surge of power grows when she looks at the other woman, still glassy-eyed but now smiling at her warmly, hopefully. Emma’s throat clenches with an emotion she’s never allowed herself to name. Talk about dangerous.

“I should be getting back,” Emma says, offering a half smile of her own. “Hook will be wondering where I am so late.” It’s a lame excuse even if it’s true and she knows it.

And just like that, the small spell is broken.

“Right, of course,” Regina clears her throat, walking out of the study and back to the foyer. She pulls open the front door and turns, her breath catching when she finds Emma so close that they’re practically pressed together. Neither of them say anything for a long moment, just search each other’s eyes for all the words not being said.

And then Emma is out the door and heading back to the Bug. She watches Regina close the door behind her as she starts the engine and begins the drive back home.


End file.
